Louisiana Voice

Vetting (v.): To subject to thorough examination or evaluation (The Free Online Dictionary).

Did the LSU Board of supervisors make even a token attempt at vetting the applicants for LSU President before settling on F. King Alexander, current president of the University of California Long Beach?

Vetting (v.) The process of performing a background check on someone before offering them employment (Wikipedia).

Did Long Beach State make even a cursory attempt at vetting F. King Alexander before he was chosen president of that university?

Vetting (v.): To make a careful and critical examination (Oxford Dictionary).

Okay, the last definition was in deference to the Oxford Roundtable Foundation, the organization headed by Alexander but not really affiliated with Oxford University.

The LSU Board of Supervisors meets today (Wednesday) to finalize the details of Alexander’s contract.

But back to the original question: was there even a perfunctory effort to vet the leader of Louisiana’s flagship university by the LSU Board of Supervisors?

Besides the fact that Alexander’s own curriculum vitae indicates that the highest level to which he rose as a teacher was a five-year (1997-2001) stint as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana before making the quantum leap to the presidency of Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, where he served for another five years (2001-2005).

Apparently, it isn’t necessary to pose the vetting question with Murray State; he simply succeeded his father, S. Kern Alexander to the presidency of the school.

Assuming that it’s the norm for an assistant professor to scale the academic ladder to president of a 10,000-student university in a single move (which, of course, it certainly is not), it’s his handling of a major grant from a prominent movie executive http://thugthebook.blogspot.com/ while at Long Beach State that we will examine here. Additional analyses of his qualifications will be provided in subsequent posts which we will offer for simultaneous release to the LSU Reveille and a couple of other choice blogs.

In May of 2007, King signed off on a three-page pledge agreement by movie producer/director Steven Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation in which the foundation pledged nearly $1.4 million to support Long Beach State’s Master’s in Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing Program within the Film and Electronic Arts Department.

The money was given by Wunderkinder in three incremental payments. The first payment, $590,000 was payable upon the effective date of the pledge agreement (May 31, 2007). The second installment of $400,000 was due on the first anniversary of the effective date of the pledge agreement (May 31, 2008) and the final payment of $388,000 was scheduled for May 31, 2009, the second anniversary date of the pledge agreement.

The pledge agreement said, in part:

• The pledged funds are designated to (i) support the Master’s in Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing Program at the (university); (ii) support the conversion of space for a soundstage and editing studio in the (Department), and (iii) support equipment maintenance, replacement, and upgrades within the (Department);

• If (the university foundation) should for any reason lose its tax-exemption so that gifts to it no longer qualify as tax deductible, or if the pledged funds are used for any purpose not specifically permitted under this pledge agreement, this pledge agreement shall terminate immediately and pledgor (Wunderkinder) shall have no further obligation thereafter to pay any amounts not previously funded.

• A breach by (the university foundation) of this pledge agreement may cause irreparable injury to pledgor not readily measurable in money and for which pledgor shall be entitled to seek injunctive relief or to terminate this pledge agreement without further obligation to (the foundation), or both.

All three checks were delivered to the university’s Film and Electronic Arts Department as scheduled.

The third check of $388,000 was issued through Comerica Bank-California on May 18, 2009. But six weeks earlier, on April 6, Alexander had issued a directive suspending future admissions for the program, effectively killing it—even as Spielberg was said to have been preparing to renew the grant for another three years.

The check was not only negotiated in the full knowledge that it would not go for its intended purpose, but some of the money was then moved from the donor foundation account into the Film and Electronic Arts general account to be mingled with state funds and used for salaries.

Because there were still five students finishing the program, each received $10,000 under the grant, leaving $338,000 that went for other purposes—an apparent violation of the terms of the pledge agreement.

When the financial crunch hit colleges and universities across the country, Long Beach State was not spared and university faculty took a 10 percent “furlough” pay cut for the 2009-2010 academic year–ostensibly because of funding cuts. Later that year, however, Alexander announced that additional money had been “found.”

The terms of the furlough that came into existence in the fall of 2009 specifically said, “Faculty Unit employees whose salary is 100 percent funded from grants and contracts not funded from the state general fund shall not be subject to this furlough agreement.”

Yet a faculty member whose salary was to have been funded 100 percent by the Spielberg/Wunderkinder grant saw a 10 percent reduction in his salary. That 10 percent was apparently re-allocated for general expenses rather than for the purposes specified in the pledge agreement which could be interpreted as a breach of the pledge contract.

To make matters worse, Spielberg was never informed of the termination of the Master’s in Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing Program.

Spielberg, meanwhile, was experiencing problems of his own and for whatever reasons, did not pursue the matter. Wunderkinder in 2008 had become a victim of the giant Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard Madoff. With assets of $12.6 million as of November of 2006, Wunderkinder’s financial fortunes had suffered right along with other investors in Madoff’s scheme.

By late 2009, even though Wunderkinder was financially crippled by Madoff, Spielberg continued his personal philanthropic activities on behalf of the University of Southern California, among others .

Vetting.